Saturday, July 27, 2013

CANADA The Lac-Megantic Disaster: The law of profit is the Criminal!

The aftermath
of the worst rail disaster in Canada for decades leaves at least 47 dead with
many of the victims still unaccounted for. On Saturday, July 6 at one o'clock
in the morning a train carrying crude oil derailed in the small town of
Lac-Megantic in Quebec (6000 inhabitants), the fire and the explosion of
several cars destroyed a large section of the downtown.

The train had
stopped 11 km outside town at the top of a hill, for a "crew
change"; actually the train, consisting of five locomotives
and 72 cars each weighing well over one hundred tons, originating in Dakota and
which had passed through Toronto and Montreal, was operated and conducted by a "crew"
of one engineer! The latter, who had just finished 12 hours of
consecutive work, went to rest after setting the brake system according to the
usual rules. But shortly after a fire was reported on one of the engines and
was extinguished by firefighters from nearby Nantes and the engine shut down.
Somehow the train was set in motion and, without a driver, it accelerated
downhill toward Lac-Megantic.

The director
of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) has laid off the engineer,
accusing him of being responsible for the accident, saying said he might have
lied about having correctly applied handbrakes on 11 tanker cars (and the
company took advantage of the accident to lay off 19 other employees in
Quebec on July 16, 19 ).

But to accuse
the driver actually serves to hide the direct responsibility of the pursuit of
profit which is the rule in capitalist society and which always leads to the
detriment of the workers and security.

MMA (formerly
Iron World Railways) was acquired in 2003 by Rail World Inc., a company owned
by an American capitalist named Burkhard who built his fortune by buying and
selling railway undertakings. In the 90s he participated in the privatization
of railways in New Zealand, which earned him a token of appreciation from the
bourgeoisie of New Zealand, the title of "honorary consul"! Also in
the 90s, he took advantage of the privatization of the railways in Britain to
put together its largest rail freight company (now owned by a German firem),
eliminating 1,700 jobs in the process. He participated in the profitable
privatization of railways in Estonia in 2001 (the local government was then
forced a few years later to buy them back), he also served on the board of
directors of a private Polish railway company and others in the
United States.

For his
success in the increase in profits of companies accomplished by reducing costs
and increasing the exploitation of workers, in 1999 Burkhard was
appointed "Railroader of the Year" by
Railway Age magazine and then one of "16 Greatest Railroaders of the
Twentieth Century". But according to statistics from the
American Federal Railroad Administration, between 2003 and 2011, MMA had a
double or triple the accident rate, than the average in the sector: the profit
is made on the backs of the workers and the population...

Shortly after
the acquisition of the Canadian company, Burkhard lowered wages by 40%, under
the pretext of the bankruptcy of a major customer. In 2010 he announced a plan
to save 4.5 million dollars Cdn. by reducing the number of workers on locomotives.
In 2012, Transport Canada, the government agency regulating railways authorized
MMA trains to operate with a single driver, no other crew. To top this off,
this has been accomplished by the indifference or outright collusion of the
unions involved.

The bourgeois
State, whose role according to democrats and reformers should be to protect and
defend "all citizens", is actually in the service of capitalism and
the capitalists.

For many
years various governments have increasingly made decisions in favor of railway
companies: if today on most freight trains in the United States and Canada the
norm consist is now two workers, there were five thirty years ago. The
productivity race that exists in this sector too, means that increasingly fewer
proletarians are obligated to produce increasingly more, and when the
various regulations enacted to ensure safety become obstacles to the
realization of profits, they are removed.

At the
request of the capitalists, in 1999 the Liberal government decided to
accelerate deregulation, pursued by every successive government policy. One of
the measures obtained by the companies was "self-regulation": it is
the companies themselves who decide what safety measures to take!

The result
was predictable: in 2007 the Canadian Safety Council released a report noting
the deteriorating security situation on the railways. Since it was established
in 1991 in the United States that the existing tank cars were not safe,
eventually in 2011 the Canadian government required companies need only buy new
more secure cars when renewing their fleet, all the while allowing the
use of the existing unsafe ones : but as the life of these cars is from thirty
to fifty years, they will still circulate for decades! Investments in rail
infrastructure are insufficient, etc.. Meanwhile the boom in transporting crude
oil boosts profits for the railways (oil transport by rail is less expensive
than pipeline) ...

The Disaster
in Lac-Mégantic is absolutely not due to chance, to fate: it is a crime
committed by the MMA railway company, by capitalism, by the profit motive that
drives all companies in this society with the aid of the State: the Canadian
State last year broke the strike by workers of Canadian Pacific Rail, thousands
of workers were laid off, working conditions have deteriorated further,
"unproductive" expenditures for security and maintenance have been
reduced to the greater profits of the company. The blood-soaked capitalist
Burkhard is not an exception, he is the product of the capitalist mode of production.

Against such
disasters, it is silly to talk about a return to a mythical past of a
"regulated" capitalism which would replace the savage
"neo-liberal" variety: the capitalism of yesterday was every bit as
savage as today's; it had nothing but contempt for the safety, security
and the lives of the workers and the public. Today as yesterday and
throughout the last century the motto of the Railway Barons remains the same:
"Uphill Slow, Downhill Fast, Tonnage first, Safety Last".

It is
capitalism that is criminal; This is what we have to combat and put to death in
order to live in safety!

The Internationalist Communist Klasbatalo (ICK) have no organizational link
with the International Communist Party and does not share all its political
positions. However, we are in total agreement with the contents of this
article.

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